mullet head file sharer

I question his premise that filesharing is going down, but I agree that amassing big collections of files isn’t a permanent thing. It’s a pain in the ass to have all these files, you’re better off leaving them out in the cloud and snarfing them as the need arises. Which is, not coincidentally, exactly the value proposition of on-demand subscription streaming services like Rhapsody and Spotify.

Downloads from peer-to-peer networks fell 6 percent in 2008, NPD said. Meanwhile, 52 percent of teens said they listened to online radio in 2008, up from 34 percent from 2007. Almost half of teens, 46 percent, used social-networking sites to download or stream music, an increase from 26 percent in 2007, NPD said.

Spotify uses a p2p system for the music played on the ‘network’; you share a space on your HDD that is holding some songs based on some internal rules. Pretty smart, but definitely not killing all p2p technology, just using it smartly.

I had no idea it was a p2p architecture, tam. I’m surprised that the find this an efficient approach, but it is is pretty cool either way.

bruce, I’m always skeptical about NPD’s numbers, which tend to play to RIAA illusions about how bad things aren’t, but in this case they match my own expectations. Listeners prefer the browser to dedicated clients like LimeWire or iTunes. Usability and convenience of an in-browser app blow away dedicated apps.